Zebulon Dingley
Biographic Data
| ID | 268841 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zebulon Dingley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zebulon |
| FAMILY NAME | Dingley |
| SIGNATURE | DINGLEY Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | College of Charleston |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2219-0250 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 5 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Ritual Violence and Traditions of Origin
This article analyzes the transformation of an image of ritual violence on the Kenyan coast from the sixteenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of sources, it shows how understandings of “ mung'aro ” — a ritual of senior male initiation among Mijikenda-speaking peoples — changed as it became an object of inquiry for generations of missionaries, explorers, colonial administrators, local intellectuals, and foreign historians and anthropol…
Mumiani Season
This article analyzes visual aspects of an otherwise verbal communicative genre: rumor. The focus is an episode of public panic in southern coastal Kenya in 2013, about “mumiani”—politically connected gangs said to murder children for their eyes. I argue that widespread defacement of public images during the panic expressed dimensions of mumiani imaginaries that went unspoken in the verbal spread of rumors about them. These defaced images—the eye…
Politics by night
This article analyses an episode of public anxiety when, in late 2013, word spread throughout Kenya's rural Lunga Lunga constituency that politically connected gangs calledmumianiwere abducting and killing children for their eyes, tongues and genitals. The rapid spread of these rumours coincided with a regional drought, parliamentary election campaigns, and the apparent discovery of 'devil worship paraphernalia' inside a shipping container at the…
The Transfiguration of Lukas Pkech
This article explores a violent episode in Kenya’s late-colonial history in which a confrontation between police and members of an anti-colonial religious movement called Dini ya Msambwa resulted an estimated fifty deaths. Drawing on archival documents and interviews with survivors, I reconstruct the event—the “Kolloa Affray,” as it became known—before showing how its violence has been preserved and transformed in the historical theology and ritu…
Rumor and History Revisited
This article analyzes an instance of collective panic about gangs of killers called Watu wa Mumiani (‘ Mumiani People’) in Digo District, Kenya in 1945. Popularly believed to work for the colonial government, Watu wa Mumiani were said to abduct Africans from roads and kill them for their blood. I offer an interpretation of this episode in terms of the history of a medicine called Mumia , a nineteenth-century ritual called Mung'aro , regional stra…
Rumor and History Revisited
This article analyzes an instance of collective panic about gangs of killers called Watu wa Mumiani (‘ Mumiani People’) in Digo District, Kenya in 1945. Popularly believed to work for the colonial government, Watu wa Mumiani were said to abduct Africans from roads and kill them for their blood. I offer an interpretation of this episode in terms of the history of a medicine called Mumia , a nineteenth-century ritual called Mung'aro , regional stra…
Mumiani Season
This article analyzes visual aspects of an otherwise verbal communicative genre: rumor. The focus is an episode of public panic in southern coastal Kenya in 2013, about “mumiani”—politically connected gangs said to murder children for their eyes. I argue that widespread defacement of public images during the panic expressed dimensions of mumiani imaginaries that went unspoken in the verbal spread of rumors about them. These defaced images—the eye…
Politics by night
This article analyses an episode of public anxiety when, in late 2013, word spread throughout Kenya's rural Lunga Lunga constituency that politically connected gangs calledmumianiwere abducting and killing children for their eyes, tongues and genitals. The rapid spread of these rumours coincided with a regional drought, parliamentary election campaigns, and the apparent discovery of 'devil worship paraphernalia' inside a shipping container at the…
Rumor and History Revisited
This article analyzes an instance of collective panic about gangs of killers called Watu wa Mumiani (‘ Mumiani People’) in Digo District, Kenya in 1945. Popularly believed to work for the colonial government, Watu wa Mumiani were said to abduct Africans from roads and kill them for their blood. I offer an interpretation of this episode in terms of the history of a medicine called Mumia , a nineteenth-century ritual called Mung'aro , regional stra…
The Transfiguration of Lukas Pkech
This article explores a violent episode in Kenya’s late-colonial history in which a confrontation between police and members of an anti-colonial religious movement called Dini ya Msambwa resulted an estimated fifty deaths. Drawing on archival documents and interviews with survivors, I reconstruct the event—the “Kolloa Affray,” as it became known—before showing how its violence has been preserved and transformed in the historical theology and ritu…
Politics by night
This article analyses an episode of public anxiety when, in late 2013, word spread throughout Kenya's rural Lunga Lunga constituency that politically connected gangs calledmumianiwere abducting and killing children for their eyes, tongues and genitals. The rapid spread of these rumours coincided with a regional drought, parliamentary election campaigns, and the apparent discovery of 'devil worship paraphernalia' inside a shipping container at the…
Mumiani Season
This article analyzes visual aspects of an otherwise verbal communicative genre: rumor. The focus is an episode of public panic in southern coastal Kenya in 2013, about “mumiani”—politically connected gangs said to murder children for their eyes. I argue that widespread defacement of public images during the panic expressed dimensions of mumiani imaginaries that went unspoken in the verbal spread of rumors about them. These defaced images—the eye…
Ritual Violence and Traditions of Origin
This article analyzes the transformation of an image of ritual violence on the Kenyan coast from the sixteenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of sources, it shows how understandings of “ mung'aro ” — a ritual of senior male initiation among Mijikenda-speaking peoples — changed as it became an object of inquiry for generations of missionaries, explorers, colonial administrators, local intellectuals, and foreign historians and anthropol…
History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (3 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · History (3 works) · Law (3 works) · African history and culture analysis (2 works)